Pirate Bay participates in P2P social research

Infamous torrent indexer The Pirate Bay is participating in a research project looking at social norms in the file-sharing community.

When you think of Pirate Bay users, you probably don’t think about people contributing to academic research about the habits and norms of the online file-sharing community. But that’s exactly what’s happening now, as infamous torrent-indexer The Pirate Bay has partnered with Lund University’s Cybernorms group to offer users a chance to participate in a short survey about how they use file sharing, and the intersection of the community’s norms of behavior and, well, laws. If Pirate Bay users want to participate, they can click a graphic on thei site’s home page to go to the survey, and the site has temporarily renamed itself “Research Bay” as a way to publicize the study.

The survey will “occasionally” be open on the PIrate Bay site to help ensure visitors from all over the world see the link and have a chance to respond. The Pirate Bay assures folks that no IP addresses or other personal information is logged by the survey. The Pirate Bay says the results of the study will be made available via Pirate Bay and other file-sharing communities once analysis is complete.

This isn’t Cybernorms‘ first foray into the culture of file-sharing: a 2009 study (PDF) found that there were little to no social norms in the community that oppose illegal file sharing, and that three-quarters of users aged 15 to 25 were completely unfazed by the illegal nature of file sharing. Almost as many indicated that stiffer penalties for file sharing wouldn’t change their behavior. And respondents didn’t seem all that concerned about concealing their activities: over 90 percent reported they did not use any sort of anonymizer or proxy service to protect their identity while file-sharing.

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Fear of Facebook: Thoughts On The Meaning of Social

Things aren’t getting any better in terms of privacy related fears. My friend @mauricioswg recently asked on twitter:

“Would Facebook revert to being more private with a massive movement of account cancellations?”

Great question. Facebook hasn’t needed to deal with that kind of churn so far. But look how fast myspace lost its mojo. The Social Network can be fickle.

Why did I start using Facebook? So I could communicate with business contacts. Then it suddenly became the one social network where I could share stuff with my wife and my niece. They opted in.

I prefer some kind of distinction between business and friends, though of course some people fall into both categories. But Facebook just sucks everybody into one service. It introduced a distinction between “real friends” and limited contacts, but that still feels kind of weird to me. Part of work/life balance is keeping things distinct.

Being social means accepting friction. That’s where good manners and etiquette come in. Being social without friction is a pathology. See the concerns about “over-friendly” or “over social” in Williams Syndrome.

Individuals with Williams syndrome have a very endearing personality. They have a unique strength in their expressive language skills, and are extremely polite. They are typically unafraid of strangers and show a greater interest in contact with adults than with their peers.

Call me old fashioned but I want to keep my real life friends and family in a context that allows for privacy. Pictures of my kids are not for general consumption- certainly not by a third party app.

I am still getting Facebook invites from business contacts. Sometimes I know these people but oftentimes only in a professional context- if so why aren’t they pinging me on Linkedin? Not only did it surprise me when Facebook became a place for my family, but to be honest I never expected Twitter to be a professional network.

All this stuff is hard, frankly. We’re still working it out. But it would be great if service providers could work with us on this stuff, letting us do the way-finding, rather than constantly encouraging us to open up and be more social.

Friction in social networks really isn’t weird – its human nature.

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Hands on with Color, the social app of the moment

Our hands-on impressions of the much-hyped social app that promises to invade your privacy and revolutionize geo-social platforms.
Are you sick of Color already? Maybe just the deluge of puns involving the app’s name that are sure to continue hitting your news feed? It’s not even out of its infancy and already it’s taking over. Based on the idea of creating a social network that is entirely location-based and contains nothing more than various photo-streams, Color is making headlines for its potential to unite strangers as well as the ever-trending mobile, social, and location platforms. And of course, it’s also being heralded as the straw that broke privacy’s back. With all the fanfare surrounding the digital world’s game-changing new app, we had to give it a shot.
Let’s address some of the more objective aspects of Color. Right off the bat, Color isn’t an entirely intuitive experience. The initial setup has a familiar, businesslike feel to it: You fill out a simple form (anyone else find catharsis in filling out forms?) asking your first name and for a self-portrait. And then it gets sort of isolating – albeit, most of this can be attributed to the fact that Color hasn’t found a wide audience yet. Even still, the UI is a cluttered, busy experience – and a wordless one at that. It’s all symbols and images, without accompanying user explanation. For example, choosing an individual image from the photo stream courtesy of anyone within your 150 foot radius yields three graphics. It took awhile to determine what each did and while Color’s clearly going for a minimalist approach, it’s done that and some – to the point of mild confusion and occasional annoyance.
All that said, some of Color’s randomness is a coup for the app. It’s more like a bulletin board of images than a neatly stacked pile, which has a certain aesthetic appeal to it. UI issue will probably be some of the first kinks Color works out in its already promised upgrade.
Now, it’s important to get this criticism out of the way because it doesn’t have very strong legs to stand on: Not enough people are using this yet for it to work like it’s supposed to. Over the course of 24 hours, our photo stream was limited to the same handful of users in our proximity…and one of them works down the hall. It would be interesting (and yeah, sort of creepy) to see the goings-on of various strangers in your vicinity, but not if it’s the same five people. Especially since they’re all within the same office building or apartment complex. The idea of seeing someone in the elevator who says “Hey I recognize you from Color!” is pretty harrowing.
Of course, if this thing really takes off like it’s supposed to and lives up to its $41 million potential, the rotating faces and photos would get exponentially more interesting.
The one thing this app’s developers have nailed is the technology. It utilizes a patent-pending Multi-lens function which uses proximity algorithms to find other smartphones in your area using the app. Since that’s the entire idea Color is based on, of course it should work, but it was still impressive seeing photos of the view from the opposite side of our office’s tower.
Color’s potential seems huge. At the very least, it’s an intriguing concept, and at most we’ll have to agree it’s a revolutionary (albeit creepy) one. If you felt pretentious uploading your mundane images to Facebook and Twitter, at least in those cases you’re being judged by people of your choice. With Color, you don’t have a ton of control over who sees what – and whether or not that’s a good thing is a matter of opinion.

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Samsung shows iTunes-like social, reading, music, media, business ‘Hubs’ for Galaxy Tabs

In addition to announcing new tablets at CTIA, Samsung also showed off a whole suite of apps, services, and business features for its Galaxy Tab and Galaxy S devices.
In addition to unveiling a new 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab and redesigning its upcoming 10.1-inch offering a few moments ago, Samsung showed off a whole suite of software and services aimed at turning its line of touch tablets into a premium offering, much like Apple has done with its iTunes ecosystem on the iPad. The company rolled out the announcements at lightning speed and was loose on details, so bear with us if there are any inaccuracies.
Samsung’s entire Galaxy Tab line will come with its newest Android UI modification, TouchWiz 4.0. Upon first glance (we’ll have more detailed impressions soon), the new UI appears to smooth out a few of Android Honeycomb’s graphical shortcomings. Its biggest features are “Live Panels,” a new widget system, and a new “Mini App Tray.”
Live Panels: Samsung has created a new set of new, large widgets for Android 3.0 and an easy way to resize and reorganize them on your homescreen. Many of these widgets are “Hub” apps that I will describe in a bit.
Mini Apps Tray: Similar to the iPad, this is a row of large shortcuts at the bottom of the homescreen. It looks very similar to OSX and iOS.
In addition to its user experience enhancements to Android Honeycomb, Samsung users on Galaxy S II and Galaxy Tab devices will soon get access to a new suite of apps that Samsung is calling “Hubs.” These were first unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, but will now be on tablets as well.
Social Hub: This hub hopes to be a unified inbox for all your communication needs. Email, calendar, contacts, social networks, and messaging will all be condensed into one location. Facebook hopes to accomplish this as well. Organizing all of this data is always harder than it appears.
Readers Hub: This app will have a full e-book library, 2300 magazines, newspapers, and other reading material for sale or subscription.
Music Hub: Samsung is getting into the ring with iTunes. It plans to sell music on its own service (we assume MP3s as no streaming feature was announced). Sony recently announced its own media store as well.
Media Hub: This app will have “first-run movies and next day TV shows” available. We don’t know exactly how the rental/purchasing will work or how much it will cost. No details were announced.
A boatload of business features were announced for the Galaxy Tabs as well. In an attempt to make IT departments happier, the Galaxy Tabs will have data encryption, a BusinessObjects Explorer that lets you take business documents on the go, Exchange ActiveSync support, Sybase support, Cisco AnyConnect, and productivity software similar to Microsoft’s Office suite which will allow users to create PowerPoint slideshows, Word documents, and Excel documents.
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